


When He Wakes

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-17
Updated: 2005-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>". . . and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings." (All centered text is from John Gillespie Magee's poem, High Flight).</p>
            </blockquote>





	When He Wakes

_Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings._

  
Sunward I've climbed . . .

  
~*~

When he wakes, he has wings.

The feather-light skim of them against his back is a pleasure beyond the words he has to describe it. He blinks and stretches (still lying on his belly) and when he smiles he feels them unfurl like . . . like laughter, he realizes, touching his lips with his hand. There's dusk in them, half-light and deepening shadows, comfort and stolen moments, breezes and rain. He sits up - carefully, unsure of them - and kneels on the narrow bed with the weight of them settling comfortably into his bones.

He reaches out, rests a hand on the small of Sirius' back, and he swears the wings begin to glow.

He slips from the bed (quiet, deliberate) and opens the window. The wings swell with the gray light of dawn, and he feels the beginning of flight in his toes. A miraculous feeling, this certainty that the world waits for him to soar. He opens his arms, stretches the wings as far as they'll go, tips back his head and smiles. There's freedom in the air that stirs between his fingers.

~*~

He thinks perhaps he leaps - a cradling breeze to catch him - and flies, swept out over rooftops and further, away, apart.

But . . .perhaps he stands, poised. An open window - the possibility enough, an anchor born of simple knowing. Or . . . Northern rivers, tumbling, music, the rumbling of an early train. The taste of salt, the scent of ice and sand and _wonder_ here. Perhaps there were sunsets, midday, forests, a rainstorm . . . yet still, the window. Did he move?

Perhaps . . . the wings are fused to his skin, to the marrow of his being, and he feels them flutter, as essential as breath.

~*~

Perhaps he touches him, but the thoughts are insubstantial, hovering just beyond the mark of his reaching fingers.

But he sees . . .

Kisses against the curve of that belly and _oh his skin, the smell of sleep_. Hands skim, touch - arms, thighs, hip, chest. His tongue chases shadows from the dent of that collarbone, nuzzles sleep away from the line of that throat. A stirring, a humming. The scent of his hair like cloves, like leaf-mold and . . . lips against lips, sleepy acquiescence _oh_ tongue, slow, heat, _morning_. Murmurs, quicksilver bright.

A hand skims length of his wingbone and _oh, this ache_. The urge, the _need_ to fly apart, dissolving . . . gentle fire, hips rocking -- _slowly, slow . . . oh_ \- wings unfurled to catch each quiver, the shift of muscle, _such tangled breath._

It rises inside of him, liquid, soft, and he feels the pleasure in the pads of his thumbs, at the nape of his neck, and . . . _Remus_ . . . he's flying again.

~*~

When he wakes, he knows the wings are gone.

Sirius smiles at him, gray eyes heavy with slumber, and Remus understands why he soars in his dreams ( _sharp, bright, pleasure, pain_ ).

He shifts to slip into the arms of the man beside him. His head fits into the curve of this shoulder, familiar, _home_ , and he all but closes his eyes to peer at the world through tangled lashes, fragments of sleep.

Sirius shivers - a breeze, blowing through the still-open window.

Remus folds his wings around them both.

~*~

  


 _and joined the trembling mirth of sunsplit clouds_

  
and done a thousand things you have not dreamed of __


End file.
